Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an integral part of any recruiting strategy and it’s appealing for a number of reasons.  Here are a few:

1. Inexpensive: It represents a free (in terms of $’s) way for job seekers to find your job content.
2. Relevance: The candidates that find your job content will definitely be interested in your position (as they searched for it).
3. Less Noise: If your job positions are properly optimized, you can separate your positions from the noise that is job boards and other recruiting sources.

We know the benefits of SEO in recruiting and I’ve gone over the basics of what you need to do to start your Recruitment SEO strategy (click on link to see earlier blog) but the question is how will SEO evolve.

3 Trends to follow in SEO!

Google’s algorithm is always changing.  Every day they are looking for new and better ways to provide more relevant search results on the millions of queries they get every day.

There’s been a ton of news with Google and their search algorithm over the last several months and here are a few of trends that you should be paying attention to in regards to Recruitment SEO:

No More Link Farms: SEO is all about quality inbound links.  Google is getting better and better at identifying quality websites and links from bad ones in their search rankings. The most recent change coming in February.

What that means for you: For your Career Site, you need to focus on receiving more quality inbound links to your content organically and not use link building gimmick sites.

Social Media: If you’ve been paying attention to your searches, you’ve probably seen social updates and search results of friends appear more often in your Google searches.  This will not change but will become more prevalent in your search strings going forward.

With the release of Google +, Google threw their hat into the ring of social media (again).   But this time, it should have a much bigger impact on SEO.  I expect Google to utilize their own social network in search results more often in the future.

What does that mean to you?  Start sharing your content and make connections on Google +.  It could have a great impact on optimizing your recruiting content.  But don’t stop at Google +, also optimize your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.  Here’s a great article on that here.

At the very least, get started on Social Media and become active on these channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +).

Video: Videos that are properly optimized are 57 times more likely to appe... on Google, according to Forrester Research.  With this knowledge, we should start creating optimized videos on our employer brand and job content, right?

What does it mean for you? Video is a medium that will continue to increase in importance in terms of SEO.  Start adding video creation to your recruitment marketing strategy.   Utilize these videos to highlight your employer brand and educate job seekers on why they should want to work for your company.

So as you are building out and improving your Recruitment SEO strategy, focus on quality inbound links, become more involved in all social media channels and utilize video to attract and educate interested candidates.

SEO strategy will continue to change and it’s important you have your finger on the pulse for new trends that are happening in SEO.